Intel E8200 OC

[Garol]

Hey all.

Ive had my Intel Core2Duo E8200 for quite some time now. Few hours ago i flashed my BIOS to the latest version and after that i was able to reach CPU clocks above 2.8Ghz. No idea what was the problem before. So ... i now pushed my cpu to 3.2Ghz (Default 2.66Ghz). So far everything seems to be stable. Im a bit worried about the cooling. In Everest i see Core #1 and #2 temperatures reaching 60C and the other "CPU" temperature is around 50C. Im not sure wether i should set my cooler to be max rpms at all times.

Well, here's a screenshot. Is this a safe overclock (considering the temps and cpu voltage). I dont want a huge overclock, just something thats very safe and so it would stay cool. Should/could i go a bit further? Also, im not exactly an expert on this.

Thanks in advance

 

[SieB]

60c is ok, nothing to worry about anyway. You probably wouldn't hit those temps under normal use anyway Prime stresses the CPU like nothing else, well apart from other CPU stress testing apps. You could try lowering the CPU volts a little till you get the lowest voltage possible with the clock speed you want, that is the only way apart from having your cooler on full blast which unless you like the noise of fans is not a good thing.

 

[Garol]

Thanks for the reply.

At this point, i have the voltages on optimized setting. I could also call it "auto". I will try to lower it later. So far everything looks stable. Reaching 2 hours of stress soon.

As far as the temps go, right now the Core #1 and #2 temps are 60-63C. Once it hit 65C too.

Also, what do u guys think about the C.I.A.2 feature (I assume its only on gigabyte boards)? I read that its kind of a easy overclock tool for newbies. Ive always had this disabled, but would this give me even better result when enabling?

Thanks :3

 

[Aurus_OC]

Most of the time you are better off overclocking yourself, because you will certainly get lower Voltages, which is a good thing. Also if everything is done for you it is not that fun

 

[marsey99]

hi garol, i used to have an e8200 and it was a great cpu with loads of oc headroom.

glad to hear your on a gigabyte board as it means you can use easytune to find out what auto is setting your voltages at

if i was you i would use it and set them yourself (as well as what cpuz says your ram is) in the bios then try to either push the fsb higher for more speed or lower the voltages for cooler temps at that speed.

as sieb said nothing else is going to work your cpu as hard as a stress test but looking at that everest screen i would question your case airflow as your graphics card looks like its a bit warm just for 2d stuff.

edit

cia is a bit pants, it just changes the fsb and leaves the ram ratio alone which can cause isues.

 

[Garol]

Thanks again.

Im not sure whats up with my GPU. In Catalyst it says 38-42C for the card. Will check that later. Right now im working on CPU. I lowered the cpu voltage from 1.26v to 1.15v. The temps dropped rapidly. Right now im going to stress it for 1 hour and then trying to decrease cpu voltage even more. The cpu core temps are barely hitting 58C now.

CPU-Z Screenie. http://localhostr.com/files/kAkIWhn/CPU-Z .png

Edit: I might try to go with more FSB. Im not sure if my ram's will handle it tho. I got 2x 1gb Apacer 800Mhz CL5 and 2x 1gb Kingston 800Mhz CL5 sticks. Would these handle frequency around 900Mhz or so? On current multiplier my CPU Clock would be 3.4Ghz. I recently got the kingston rams, the cheapest i could get.

Edit2: Tomorrow i will clean the heatsink coolers on CPU and GPU. I clean them regularily but right now both have some dust on them.

Thanks

 

[marsey99]

your ram is going to stop you i think, you might get some more out of them but you would need to test them one at a time to see which does what.

ram was what stopped my oc on my 8200 as my old ram would top out @540 fsb so i never knew how high the cpu would go.

iirc i used to run that cpu most of the time @7x499 (much better latency than 500fsb for me) on 1.15v but after 3.5ghz it really need more volts and 4ghz needed just over 1.4v.

edit

could be everest is older than your gpu, you might need aida (its what everest is called now) to get the right temps.

 

[Garol]

Actually, i have the latest AIDA64 but its not showing temps at all. Im getting a blank page at Sensor area. :/

Edit: I tryed going higher. At 3.36Ghz and above i get the error "FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.484375, expected less than 0.4". Higher clocks had rounding 0.5. I googled for it and the problem seems to be in ram. I read that at this case the ram voltages should be increased. Others write that loosening the timings is a better idea.

I guess i will stay with 3.2Ghz since that was pretty stable and had no problems for 2 hours in Prime95. Will stress it longer tomorrow at those clocks. But, i was able to keep this same 1.152v at 3.5Ghz so ram is very limiting component in my pc at the moment.

Edit2: Currently 3.2Ghz @ 1.120v. http://localhostr.com/files/mu27AvH/CPU-Z .png

 

[Garol]

Bump.

Today i ran prime again with the latest oc settings (from my last post). I have stepping on, so on idle its 2.4Ghz and on load its 3.2Ghz. Òn idle its vcore is around 1.136 afaik. On load it actually turns the vcore down too - to 1.120. But today i noticed that after few minutes of stress the vcore dropped down to 1.104 and once even went to 1.3xx (dont remember exactly). What would this mean? Are the cpu-z voltage ratings correct or this could lead to PSU issues and cpu not getting clean electricity? I wish my mobo had those pins where u could measure exact voltages with an test-instrument.

Also, a question just to be sure. Less voltage wont reduce perfomance? As long as i have the system stable - its all good? On higher voltages the extra currency is wasted anyway?

 

[marsey99]

sounds like load line calibration is increasing the vcore as needed and speedstep/eist is dropping it and the multi when not.

i have found that when your board line stable performance can drop a couple of % vs a 100% stable settings but nothing you would notice outside of benchmarks. given your low voltages i dont think knocking them up a step or 2 will be an issue if you think you are suffering any loss because of it.

like you said tho if its stable its all good, extra voltage just creates more heat.

 

[Garol]

Okay.

I will try to lower the voltage even further. Will set a goal to reach 1.100v for now.

 

[Garol]

Bump!

I didn't want to make a new thread for this. I'm still on the same setup, going at it again..

I've reached 3.8Ghz with 1.344v right now. I increased RAM, FSB and MCH voltages by +0.1 .. I tried going higher, but 3.84Ghz wasn't stable anymore. I've tried not to go past 70C with temps, reached 68C so far. My cooler (Freezer 7 Pro) is on Auto with PWM adjustment.

My goal is to reach 4.0Ghz, but I'm worried about having vCore set at 1.4500v in BIOS isn't very good for the CPU. At this point, I'd set my cooler to work at full blast. I was able to boot with 4.0Ghz though. How do I change my RAM timings and should I kick my FSB voltage higher?

 

[agent_x007]

Soo... what motherboard U got there (ie. model) ?
Because ~500MHz FSB (or 2000MHz efective) ain't easy to do on most LGA775 motherboards.

PS. Also, screen-shot from "Memory" tab (CPU-z) would be nice.

 

[Garol]

I totally forgot about motherboard.

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L with latest BIOS (F9 - 19. June 2009).

Tried going a bit higher, was somewhat stable in Prime95, but I pulled down the FSB a little since it actually happened to crash in photoshop. I had stuff to do, so I didn't go into fine tuning it, I will do that tomorrow.

 

[agent_x007]

How come U got 4GB of RAM but in "Single Channel" mode on that motherboard ?

U got 2x2GB sticks, right ?
So, why U connected them to DIMM1+DIMM2 or DIMM3+DIMM4 slots (U don't like reading MB's maunal or something) ?

1) Connect your RAM to DIMM1 + DIMM3 slots.
2) FSB at 500MHz may require +0.2V on NB and 2,1V-2,3V on RAM.

But that kind of voltage on RAM may be... dangerous, so can U screenshot SPD profiles of your Kingston's mamory (ie. from "SPD" tab from CPU-z, one is OK - i guess they were bought as set/pair) ?

 

[Garol]

There was a problem once with running them in 1 & 3 slots. Not sure what was the case, but I wanted to install another 2x2GB, they weren't recognized from the first 2 slots. I will do more tests on these soon.

The RAM was bought as a pair, yes. Values are same for both DIMMs.